


Born To Love Her

by Kernezelda



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-03 00:42:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5270108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kernezelda/pseuds/Kernezelda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Secret Mutant prompt: wingfic</p><p>Thanks to Keire_Ke for excellent beta & constructive suggestions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Born To Love Her

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elenothar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elenothar/gifts).



“Can you do it, Dr. Milbury?”

Nathaniel Essex narrowed his eyes. “Never doubt my skills, Madam. That is not my concern—”

“Neither is funding. Request whatever you need, but I want results. Soon.”

Thin lips flattened into a line, whitening already pallid skin. “My earliest estimate for completion of the project is three years—if the material is viable.”

Sharon Xavier nodded once, a shallow dip of her chin. “Begin.” She gathered her discreet signs of wealth: the handbag that cost an average laborer’s yearly wage, the designer jacket and gloves of similar worth; the hat with its tasteful feather, the same jet black as everything else. Mourning enhanced the young widow’s pale skin, her golden, perfectly coiffed hair and the frozen blue of her eyes. Her impenetrable expression took it further, so that she appeared an ivory sculpture.

She’d not yet reached the door when he spoke again, the quiet, mildly curious words carrying perfectly in the silence of his office, soundproofed behind elegant oak paneling. “You could have gone to a fertility clinic; there are at least three in New York City. Why choose this instead?”

She paused. “Within the past year I’ve spoken with Tuttle. I visited the Joneses and John Rock. They all said that what I want is impossible. They looked at me as though I were mad.” Her low, even voice dropped the words like lead. “My husband spoke of you, Dr. Milbury. Of your work. Of your abiding interest in human genetic potential. He believed you to be exceptionally skilled.” Stylish, sturdy heels clacked on the hardwood flooring. “My other reasons are not your concern.” Out she stepped, not looking back. The door closed soundlessly behind her.

Essex turned his attention to the highly insulated container she’d left on his desk. The Women’s Obstetrical & Medical Branch of the Mueller, Milbury & Black Research Center boasted high-quality equipment, monitoring devices, computer processors and simulators of Essex’s own design, far superior to any other facility in the known world, funded in large part by the wealthy elite of the tri-state area; but this semi-public laboratory was only one tip of his very large and multi-headed iceberg. He considered his ongoing research projects into base and mutated human genetic material, in many stages of development in various hidden laboratories across the continents. This small foray into assisted reproduction would serve as a minor diversion while he awaited more compelling results.

_Two years later_

“Interesting.” He noted the projected dimensions of the swan-like wings suggested by the complex algorithms of his emulation program, and Pincus pointed toward the reading for hollow bones, which indicated that one day, actual flight might be possible if Worthington were to father a naturally mutated human. “Set aside a few trophectoderm cells for further study.” His head researcher lingered to obey as Essex moved on from the Worthington lab.

Striving to improve the strains of the evolutionarily gifted had become Nathaniel Essex’s life’s work a human lifetime ago; in his century and a half, he’d found and acquired many bloodlines of interest. The Worthington sample was a case in point, a sport in the touted lineage. Stories of beings with wings persisted in human mythology, so perhaps a trace of truth could be divined via modern re-emergence. A surrogate host could be found if he decided to proceed beyond projections to fertilization and live birth.

It was a brief distraction from reports that the Summers boy in Alaska exhibited no expression of mutation at all, disappointing in a family that Essex had carefully observed and subtly guided for near a century. He had plans for that genetic line, but it seemed the time had not yet come to put those plans into motion. Patience and perseverance would have to serve until then, and what was another decade or two to an immortal?

In the lab housing the Xavier project, Chang raised a hand in greeting before returning to his microscope. The first examination a year ago of the frozen skin cells and sperm of Brian Xavier had shown markers for mutation. Such were long familiar to Essex in type if not specific trait, but he’d seen no reason to inform Mrs. Xavier, not when the material he could harvest held potential for so much more than her own bizarre request: a perfected clone of her husband, healthy and immune to all known disease. A small desire for a small mind, indeed, but the Xavier funding was more than welcome.

Essex had begun the first experiments with thawed, viable sperm cells, along with a set of eggs harvested from Sharon Xavier, whose donations had been obtained at her gynecological exams with Dr. Mueller, after diagnosis of a sudden, peculiar women’s disease requiring referral to MMB, frequent monitoring, and treatment over the previous year, after which it vanished as speedily as it had begun. Most of the eggs had been frozen along with the sperm sample. Several of the fresh eggs had been fertilized in vitro; five of those had survived, had been allowed to grow to a certain point before being frozen, and were then reserved against later need.

Hypothesis: removing the next set of ova’s own genetic material would allow the stem cells derived from Xavier’s skin sample to develop solely into an embryo, thus enabling the growth of an exact duplicate.

Result: failure. Cloning of an adult human being was not yet possible.

Despite all of Essex’s genius, he could not with his own senses determine exact optimum conditions of microscopic cells, and even his singular and fantastic advancements to modern scientific equipment had not yet achieved the sensitivity and precision needed for such ground-breaking (and publicly reviled if known) experiments. The first set of stem cell trials for cloning Brian Xavier failed quietly and quickly. Despite the failures, it had been, it still was a ground-breaking scientific achievement, decades beyond the current difficulties of simple artificial insemination.

A third set of eggs was fertilized, allowed to mature to embryo stage, and then examined for viability. Those which remained were altered, differing each from the next by a single variable. Many failed; each failure eliminated a fruitless line of investigation. The stimulated cells which survived longest were divided, again altered by a single variable, and the results observed. That was the nature of science.

And now, at the end of two years of unrestricted and exhaustive research, experimentation, and persistence, Essex’s small team, under his occasional guidance, had produced ten viable embryos, sturdy and potentially able to survive implantation into a human womb. He needed only to acquire surrogates to host them, and to ensure healthy gestation and birth.

*

_Seventeen years later_

“I was born to love her.” Young Xavier gazes out of the sealed attic window, brilliant blue eyes unblinking and fixed on a hawk circling high near the house. “I did. I still do.”

The hawk soars in the wide open sky far above sturdily mullioned panes, gliding on thermal uplifts over the extensive forest below, until it’s too distant to see anymore, far beyond the border of the estate. The Xavier prototype has become a magnificent specimen, with thick, winter-dark hair, and skin which seems to glow in the pale winter light. Save for his cornflower eyes, the young man before Essex looks like nothing in the world so much as Brian Xavier returned. Save for the eyes. And the wings.

White as alabaster, they are beautiful, but more than that, they are _functional,_ strong enough to support the hollow-boned body at any height, in any daring aerial maneuver.

Clipped now, one of them at least, by a ragged and inelegant cut across the major flight feathers. 

Not that there is anywhere for an angel to go, in a world that to date will see such a striking creature chained and broken to heel. “Will I ever be as free as that?”

Perhaps Sharon had been crueler than she knew, to keep the specimen as a son instead of a pet.

*

_Fifteen years earlier_

“I wanted my husband back,” she’d gritted between fine, white teeth when Essex came to deliver her prize, after precisely three years of research and experimentation generously funded by the Widow Xavier. “My Brian, whole and healthy.” The knuckles of her hands had ground palely against one another while she controlled her breathing, her appearance, every aspect restrained to societal perfection.

“A perfect replica is waiting downstairs. However, I thought you might like to see another result of my research. Your husband’s genetic material proved far more… flexible than expected. It combined readily with several other samples. _This_ is the most visibly harmonious product.”

Essex had nodded to the child at his side, a beautiful creature with lush chestnut hair and eyes bright as sunlit cornflowers. Cupid’s-bow lips turned up at the corners, blue eyes _sparkled_ when Essex gently pushed him toward Sharon. Wings white as fresh-fallen snow folded neatly over and behind silk-clad shoulders, hiding extensive and far-reaching, if still immature, musculature beneath, the human body fully adapted to its avian grafting; the boy’s chest bore similar alteration, keeled down the sternum to provide anchorage for the muscles that powered the flapping of his wings. Flight, if it could be called that, was already possible; Essex had several times observed the subject in the lab, trying short hops and shorter glides, laughing as it learned to flap and angle its wings and land on its feet without falling. 

In the Xavier house’s stiffly formal parlor, “Mama” had lilted into the air, soft and breathy and British to the core, assured by a nanny-bot programmed with Sharon Xavier’s speech patterns—Essex had left nothing to chance with his first thoroughly successful prototype of this kind. Sharon Xavier recoiled as if she’d been struck. Essex watched the interaction without comment, prepared to remove the child if she rejected it. Human nature being what it was, he didn’t anticipate that outcome, but there were many alternative uses for such a unique specimen.

“He is your child,” he’d informed her, smiling coolly as her eyes went wide. “Biologically, in part. But also in that you authorized me to do whatever was necessary to clone your husband. Cloning is a science still in its infancy: the most complex organism successfully cloned to date is a mere salamander. But _I_ have successfully cloned a human being. And in so doing, advanced the understanding of human genetic potential immeasurably. How malleable it is. How easy to manipulate for someone who possesses the skills and equipment and will to do so.” Sharon had glanced at him briefly, uninterested in the grandeur of his discoveries, the leaps in scientific advancement he’d made: while other scientists still studied fruit flies, Nathaniel Essex had conquered the human genome.

He’d dismissed her inattention; she was no more than a common human, unworthy of his ire. Instead, he’d focused on the first and finest creation of his current persona. The child made from Brian and Sharon Xavier’s genes, crossed with those of the Worthington sample, stood rapt at its mother’s knee, entranced by the embroidery of her dress. Small fingertips traced lines and threadwork, cherry-red lips moving as it near-soundlessly crooned some inane bit of chatter.

“I can provide you a living doll matured to the age of your deceased husband,” Essex had continued. “Yours to do with as you please. But Brian Xavier is gone. His mind, his personality, everything that made him the man we both knew, these exist nowhere in the world. I brought the child as an alternative.”

In the end, he’d shown her the prepared body—no modifications to its genome, despite her request, save accelerated aging, another scientific marvel he had no intention of sharing with the world until it should suit his purpose. It breathed, it opened its eyes and looked about, but no more comprehension existed behind the dark blue irises than that of any newborn babe’s. As he’d anticipated, the Xavier widow had refused the homunculus. She took the child instead.

“He responds to Francis,” Essex informed her before leaving.

“Why Francis?”

“He was the fifth trial of his set, and the first to survive without detectable flaw.”

Returning to the lab with the clone could in no way be considered a failure. It wasn’t as if Essex couldn’t find a use for the raw material.

*

Having succeeded so magnificently with his first, Essex designated the second run of created humans ‘mutates’, given that their naturally mutant genes had been augmented further by deliberate grafting and hybridization in vitro. Designed for servitude and short lives, they were beautiful, mute, sterile and nearly invulnerable. In the lab, the scientists and workers called them angels. Their cells could not be replicated by non-Milbury techniques. Their bodies failed after twenty-five years, and decayed after death as rapidly as they matured after birth.

While Sharon Xavier raised her nestling in the protective embrace of extreme affluence, the second generation of mutates went onto the open market. Wealthy private collectors and sex industry magnates were among the first to buy. Eye, hair, skin, and wing color—all were selectable before conception, and with a two-year waiting period from purchase to delivery, MMB Productions guaranteed quality pedigrees and immaculate appearance (per requested gender and desired age of mutate). No returns.

Controversy among pundits and the general public began before the first orders came pouring in.

*

The pastel colors of the nursery had been soothing and gentle, as were the nanny-bots which fed and cleaned the mutated infants, comforted them and sang songs in different languages and accents, taught them their ABCs and numbers and rocked them to sleep each night.

The great wooden halls and chambers of the Xavier home were far different, but there was Mrs. Green who cooked and sang and waved a spoon in the kitchen, Mr. Baker who made green things grow when he grumbled at them, Miss Dickens whose ring of keys clinked when she walked, and who tsked at Charles when his shoes tracked mud across figured rugs and gleaming wood flooring.

(They didn’t draw their hands across their shoulders and down their chest like Mr. Dobson, whose mind felt so wet and sticky, whose hands were damp and clutched too hard. He didn’t come anymore to teach Charles, and Charles didn’t miss him.)

Unlike nanny-bots, humans didn’t just have an outside face, but they were full up with feelings, often several at once, so that Charles couldn’t settle. It took so long to figure out that he shouldn’t mirror what he felt, but what he saw in those outside faces. After he’d cried from his next tutor’s aching tummy, when he’d curled up around his gut with his hands between his legs and his wings tucking round like a blanket, when Miss Dickens and the doctor had warbled and murmured over him in his little bed, a slim circlet became part of his daily wear, and the feelings of his tutors faded away to faint hums, no more.

There was a lady in the house who sometimes came to look at him. She’d stand in the doorway during lessons, but didn’t wave back when Charles waved at her, and her insides were frozen, her mouth stiff and flat. She’d appear in the gardens outside the nursery window sometimes, but wouldn’t look up at the window when Charles tapped. He wondered for a time if he wasn’t imagining her, but Miss Dickens had pursed her lips and said that, no, the lady was real, and that she owned the whole house and all the land within view.

In the stories in the nursery, that meant she was the Queen, so perhaps it was Charles who was meant to rescue her somehow, although he didn’t know what he might rescue her from, until he remembered that every time he saw her, she seemed so cold and unhappy. So he took the heavy blanket from his closet one day. It was a long journey, up the stairs and to the side of the house where the lady’s mind lay asleep. By the time Charles got there, he was very tired, and the blanket had begun to unfold. He had to let the end of it down to reach for the door knob, and was too tired to drag it back up when the door swung open.

Inside, the Queen lay in all of her clothes on the bed, with a bottle of brown liquid beside her on the nightstand. Charles pushed the door shut with his foot, and made his way over. He heaved the blanket up onto the bed, climbed up after, and started pulling the heavy fabric folds apart until he’d gotten it spread properly over the lady, all the way from her feet to her chin. She never woke up, hardly even moved. Inside, she was sad. Charles crawled under the blanket and curled up next to her, wrapping his fingers around hers, a little damp and warm.

Maybe the blanket was already working.

*

Sharon woke up with an aching head and heavy limbs, hot and held down. She dragged a hand up to rub her eyes, to shove down the heavy mass making her so hot, and opened her eyes to realize that someone had laid a blanket over her, and that she wasn’t alone in her bed.

A lump under the blanket snuffled and moved. Sharon flung it back, and it was the child beneath. She drew back hurriedly, alarmed, angry, guilty for no reason and angry again at that. But. His tiny fingers had laced through hers, and now lay loosely curled around a tiny palm, while her own fingers reflexively opened and closed, her own palm sweaty and cooling in the air. Asleep, the boy looked exactly like baby pictures of Brian.

It must have been the child who covered her, but why? How had he even known where she was?

The little boy snuffled again, curling up even tighter now that he was no longer covered by the blanket. His wings folded around him, hiding him almost entirely from view. He looked like a cherub. He looked like Brian.

Tentatively, Sharon reached out. She’d touched him once before, when she’d accepted him into her home. Had taken his tiny hand in hers, and led him to Miss Dickens. “His name… His name is Charles. Find a room for him,” she’d instructed, still half-dazed from Essex’s visit. “Arrange clothing, feeding times, I don’t know.” She’d looked down into utterly trusting eyes the same as her own, had felt her throat try to close up when he blinked, when it was Brian’s face in miniature. “He’ll need books, toys. Tutors.”

And then she’d slipped her fingers from his, and turned away, because although he might be of her flesh and Brian’s, she felt no part of herself in this child, a creature of cold science and experimentation, her pain transmuted into flesh and blood without her knowledge or consent.

“Mama?” she’d heard behind her, questioning but not frightened.

Her hands had clenched into fists. “Don’t call me that.” There’d been no further sound as she swept away.

Had it been an entire year since then? Since this child so beautifully asleep in her bed first traced stubby little fingers over the fabric of her dress, since she’d seen and rejected the mindless doll Essex had made for her?

Brian…

Brian would have loved the boy. He’d wanted to be a father. He’d been so excited talking about genetic permutations, even when his flights of fancy sounded like pure fantasy. If he’d ever set his eyes upon a winged child—it would have been all of his wishes come true.

“Lady?”

Oh. Why did that hurt? Had she expected, had she wanted to hear “Mama” again?

Sharon forced a smile; it was small, but it seemed to be enough for the boy, whose eyes were hers through and through, and filled with light and contentment, as if she were the thing that made him happiest in the world.

“Why are you here?” she asked, and felt her heart beating faster as she learned of cold queens who needed warmth, of boys who would save them. Something inside of her cracked open, a vein of dark ice splitting her down the middle.

She’d wanted children, once. With Brian. They would have made beautiful babies.

Essex had done it, had gone against every code of ethics to do as she asked, and had gone farther, to create what she’d never imagined.

But here was a child, hers and Brian’s. As perfect as she’d ever imagined—with wings, as fantastic as any fairy tale changeling.

The boy’s hand had found hers again. He looked at her with those wide eyes. “Did it work? You feel different in here.” His other hand patted her breastbone, the warmth of it searing through her blouse.

“Maybe it did,” she finally said. Carefully, she reached out. The boy practically flung himself into her lap, and when she wrapped her arms around him, slowly, fearful of hurting his erratically flapping wings, he hesitated not at all in flinging his arms around her waist and burying his face in her bosom.

A knock at the door preceded Miss Dickens’ poking her head in; her expression changed from calm to surprised chagrin in the blink of an eye. “Oh,” she said, “I’m so sorry, I had no idea he’d run up here.” She hurried forward to retrieve her wayward charge.

“No.” It took a second for Sharon to realize that had been her voice. “No, he’s fine.”

Miss Dickens’ face softened. “I see.” She took in their embrace, the out of place blanket, and her usual serenity lit her features. “I understand, Mrs. Xavier.”

“Do you?” Sharon held the boy—Charles, his name was Charles—in her arms. Felt the weight of him, the warmth of his skin and his feathers and the heat of his breath. “I’m not sure I do.” But she understood enough.

She looked up from the child nestled in her lap. “Miss Dickens, have I introduced you to my son?”

*

Sharon Xavier was his Mother. She was very beautiful, like one of the statues in the garden, but with warm skin and bright colors. She taught Charles how to eat properly, what silverware went with what dish. She taught him how to dance, carrying him in her arms until he was too big, and then bearing him on her feet, her blue eyes alive as the music played and they whirled around the wide, wide gallery under warm summer light pouring in the tall southern windows. And when Charles’ wings unfolded and he rose aloft at the ends of their tightly knitted fingers, she laughed inside and out, the cold part of her thawing more and more as time went by. Her inside feelings were much easier to read, even with the circlet. Charles loved nothing more than when Mother came to read to him at night instead of Miss Dickens, when she lay beside him on his bed and let him curl next to her, the warmth of her comforting and the lilt of her voice the same as his own.

Mother preened his feathers until he was big enough to do it himself. The nanny-bots had done it at the nursery, but a man came to the estate with falcons, and taught her and Charles how to keep his feathers clean and straight after bathing. Sam showed them how to use their fingers to spread the vanilla-sweet oil exuding from the base of his spine, beneath the soft, wide rows of feathers descending from between his shoulders. Preening took a long time, and sometimes it hurt when feathers were damaged or torn, and it seemed to take longer the older Charles got, but that was only to be expected when his wings grew along with him.

*

The national argument grew louder when the third run (the second made public) of mutates were announced: not winged but furred, fuzzy blue creatures with amber eyes, with prehensile fingers and toes perfect for aerial performances or delicate craftwork. The HM-RD infants with their pointed ears and snaggle-toothed grins were called elves once by a lab worker, and it stuck.

The already noisy public went mad. “Demons!” screamed headlines in the deep South. “Unnatural manipulation of God’s creation,” said the Vatican. “Violation of scientific ethics,” accused _The Lancet._ Repetitions of what had gone before, and similarly uninteresting.

Nathaniel Essex had no patience for committees and posturing. While Congress and the NIMH, the AMA and various other public organizations debated the reality of evolution and the ethics of altering human beings, argued for or against the mutates’ humanity or lack thereof, a clearly identifiable corpse was found in the wreckage of Nathan Milbury’s vehicle near MMB, thus neatly excising Essex from any further involvement. He’d headquarter his research in Europe for the next decade or so, while his true North American concerns carried on under the same conditions of secrecy. The Summers boy had joined the military, risking his precious genetic cargo. Essex would have to arrange to collect another sample quickly.

As for the mutate diversion… it would rise or fall at the behest of the American media and corporate lobbyists.

*

Learning had always been easy, and there was so much to learn. The tutors Mother hired (and paid hugely for their discretion) concurred on his brilliance, his uncanny comprehension, his intuitive grasp of materials. His mind was a marvel, another thing which set him apart—not only from other children, but from other mutates, as well, those ones left mute by design, and uneducated past basic reading/math skills unless owners should choose otherwise.

Charles grew older, and the falconer helped him with his flying. He shouted instructions from the ground, while Charles tumbled and regained height, swooped in tandem with the diving falcon but crashed instead of pulling up. That was his first broken bone, but it was Sharon’s mind that screamed the loudest when she saw him fall, when his circlet jostled loose and rolled away. Charles huddled around his arm, but his winces were his mother’s pain and grief. For a time as he recovered, stuck on the ground with tutors chirping at him by the hour, Sharon thought seriously about marriage offers she’d received, about how a man about the house might be good for a boy.

“But Sam is a man,” Charles answered one afternoon, circlet off and mind dizzy with her circular worry. “Mr. Baker and Hugh Smith are men.”

Sharon froze in her chair. Her magazine drooped in her hands. She swallowed. _CHARLES. CAN YOU HEAR WHAT I’M THINKING?_

He clapped his hands over his ears, grimacing. “I’m sorry, please don’t shout, I’m sorry—”

“Oh, darling.” Sharon glided across the sitting room, knelt down before Charles’ chair and pulled his hands loose before cradling his head between her own. “Your father was extraordinarily sensitive to people’s moods. Extreme empathy disorder, one of his doctors called it. There were times during my confinement when he even seemed to suffer exactly as I did.”

Her cornflower eyes blinked, spilling tears. “I’ve suspected for years that you’ve inherited your father’s sensitivity, but as Dr. Milbury would have it, yours may have mutated into a new, stronger form. If you can hear what people are thinking…”

Charles reached up and wrapped slim fingers around his mother’s hands, leaning in to her. “Mother?”

Sharon smiled, but it was weak, more a tremble in her lips than anything else. “You must never tell a soul that you can hear other people’s thoughts.” Her gaze hardened; her voice edged into steel. “Never tell, because they’d take you away. They’d want to find out how you do it. They’d experiment on you, and in the end, they’d cut you open to remove your brain for dissection. You must never tell, Charles.” Her fingers flexed in his hair. “Promise me.”

Tears poured down Charles’ face. The force of his mother’s emotions, her terror overwhelmed him. Flashing through her mind were memories of carnival freakshows she’d seen as a child, and the memory of the single time she’d visited Milbury’s facility. The vast chambers of soulless, frightening machinery, the blobs of human tissue, twisted and grotesque, that were the failures before Milbury succeeded with the clone. The memory of seeing that clone of her dead husband, a mindless brute devoid of Brian’s endless warmth and affection, the very things that had won her heart and which she’d so missed that she’d commissioned a clone in the madness of grief.

“But Milbury was wise in that,” she whispered, looking into Charles’ wet eyes, smoothing her hands down over the hunched arches of his wings, smoothing ruffled feathers, bringing her arms down to encircle his waist and draw him against her. “He brought me a son instead of a ghost.”

But in her mind, along with the memories and the fear and the grief, were newspaper clippings, and news from the television, and radio broadcasts, all jumbled together in a raging mishmash of other children like Charles, children with wings, and children without, who were blue with yellow eyes. Children sold like cattle to the highest bidder. Sharon was terrified that Charles could fall among them. That he’d be lost to her, like his father was before him.

Helplessly, he pressed his face into her neck, hot tears running down, his skin clammy and chilled with the frightful images in her mind. “I promise,” he whispered, and hugged her as tightly as he could. “I’ll never tell.”

*

The question of mutates simmered as the court cases against the surviving MMB members dragged on—the issue of mutate identity aside, Milbury and his research team had knowingly altered human genetic material without their subjects’ permission, and used it for their own profit. In the meantime, the MMB holdings were frozen, the labs, production and training facilities ordered closed, and all remaining livestock remanded to federal custody to await legal resolution of the several pending cases.

Sharon Xavier’s name never came into it. Essex had buried their connection along with the Milbury identity.

Speculation arose that the mutate question might well linger into the next two decades—to be neatly resolved by the expiration of the creatures in question.

*

One wall of Charles’ office boasted a dizzying array of certificates of academic achievement via home schooling. Though correspondence, he’d gained entrance to Harvard University, participated in all of his classes, and at the tender age of sixteen, had graduated _magna cum laude_.

Now, he carefully typed up his formal applications to several universities across the country which offered correspondence graduate courses. Several, not the many he could consider were he able to attend in the flesh, to travel freely, to go anywhere beyond the bounds of the estate.

Charles yearned to get away, to head into town, to go the diners and bookstores and shops and restaurants that populated his mother’s mind, the minds of the staff, of everyone he’d known all his life. He dearly wanted to attend Oxford, where his father had gone, to walk in his father’s footsteps, to connect in some way with the man in whose image he’d literally been created, and who haunted the woman he’d left behind.

That could never happen so long as _what_ he was remained in legal limbo. Were he to leave the estate, were he to drive (he had learned how to drive at thirteen within the confines of the grounds, on driveways and on grass, sedate and safe) or even fly—he’d be taken into custody upon first sighting. That he could speak would only cause confusion. That he bore a driver license, voter registration (obtained completely legally by the Xavier’s law firm, Sharon had told him)—that he conducted himself as human—these offenses would see him reviled as an anomaly, an unnatural thing—which, to be honest, he was.

He might be kidnapped or raped or beaten to death before anyone thought to call his ‘owner’ or to incarcerate him.

Charles had long ago learned to protect his mind without the circlet, taught himself how to touch the minds around him without detection—for his own protection. He needed to know how to influence others, even if the only people he knew were those he’d known and trusted for years. He could converse reasonably well with anyone—on the estate.

Letting anyone else know about his telepathy was never going to happen. Mother had made it clear years ago, and Charles had seen for himself on the news, had heard it over the radio even as a child, though he hadn’t understood it, how blacks, how Japanese-Americans, how mutants and mutates were treated. He was singular even for a mutate. There was no one like him in all of the world, as far as he knew.

So long as his mother lived, he was safe. And if she—God forbid—if she died… Sharon had shown him the legal documents declaring him her sole heir. Her lawyers had covered every loophole and contingency they could find. Charles was her son, and any blood test would prove it.

But he was also a mutate.

He stopped typing, distracted from his very elegant essay by his jumble of frustrations. He stretched his shoulders, drained the cold dregs of his tea, grabbed a modified jumper and scarf from the hooks by the door and headed out. Charles felt that nothing in the world would soothe him as well as a long flight. His suite occupied the opposite end of the house from his mother’s, and it was a nice, brisk stroll to her door. At his knock, she bade him enter, and he found her already rising to her feet, her own tea left half-full on her desk.

“Where shall we go today?” she asked, tucking her arm in Charles’.

“South,” he replied, and submitted to her fussing with the fastenings of his thick navy sweater, winding the bright blue scarf round his neck. “I’m fine, Mother, I am old enough to dress myself.”

“You’ll always be my child.” A cool press of lips to his cheek ushered them out the front door. The winter chill breezed around them, snow on the ground and in the trees, the world draped in fresh layers of white over older layers of gray. Their wellies kept their feet dry, but didn’t do much for warmth.

Sharon stamped her feet, even though she was wrapped from head to toe in a warm, red coat. “Go on, then, baby bird. Show me the world.”

Charles grinned and breathed in, breathed out, and let his wings unfold. He flexed them, slowly at first and then sharply, until he could feel his blood pumping hotly through his veins, the air expanding his lungs and his muscles pulling against his keel. He offered his mother a little wave, grinning, and leaped and flapped and broke the bounds of gravity. His mother shrank into a red dot while the snow-covered forest stretched for acres around. Charles opened his mind to his mother and let her see what he saw. Crows, black against the cold white sky. Telephone wires bearing rows of tiny, huddled birds. The house, tiny now as it never could be, truly.

 _It’s beautiful,_ Sharon thought, and Charles agreed, so attuned to her presence that he barely needed to focus to hear her. To the north, a small river meandered through the property, leaving the woods and crossing the far end of the cleared area, feeding a sizeable lake presently empty of its usual ducks.

A cold breeze rifled through his hair and moaned lightly through his widespread feathers. Charles sighed and did a long, slow barrel roll, looking at the distant water towers of the town and its suburbs, looking at the flashes of metal and color as cars drove along the roads beyond the woods.

He smelled smoke, and saw it miles distant, a column of fire, black and orange and vibrant in the blue sky, dark smoke rising and spreading. It was too far to be any danger here. Still, Mrs. Green would want to know. She had a keen ear for the goings-on all over Westchester. Mother agreed. _Come down, darling. We’ll have lunch, and you can tell me about your applications._

In his leisurely descent, Charles saw it. A black car, trundling down the long, winding road to the estate.

It pulled up to the gate. Charles hovered in place, watching as the gatekeeper greeted the visitors and returned to his heated booth, as Miss Dickens a few seconds later stepped out from the front door to speak to Sharon. Mr. Smith stepped out again to unlock and open the gate.

There were few good thermals at this time of year. Rather than drifting down, Charles angled his wings and let himself fall, pulling up only at the last moment to land at his mother’s side.

Something about the approaching strangers jangled Charles’ nerves. He reached out a mental tendril, only to recoil at the ugly swamp of their minds. They thought… It was an honest mistake, as distasteful as it was. Angels such as himself were most often viewed as sexual toys for the rich. But still. He stood up straight at his mother’s side, shorter than she by a head despite his many exhortations to his body to _grow._

“Ma’am.” The shorter of the two men held out a card. His hard hazel-green eyes diverted to Charles, then returned to watching Sharon. His companion said nothing, battered face confirming the somewhat pugnacious cast of his thoughts. “You’re being subpoenaed.”

*

Essex kept tabs on world news for points of interest. When word came of Sharon Xavier’s involvement in the investigation, he intended at first to do nothing. His work there had ended a decade prior, and his European projects required close attention. Still. Upon leaving his research facility, he picked up several U.S. papers from a news stand and sat down at a café to peruse them. He looked for any mention of what had become of the Xavier prototype.

According to one of the papers, the angel remained on its owner’s estate, a courtesy to Brian Xavier’s widow on behalf of his service to the country.

Further reading found no more of interest. Essex disposed of the papers and returned home.

*

Charles didn’t care for the man assigned to him. Ostensibly, Mr. Stryker as an agent of the Court had authority only to ensure that Charles remained on the grounds, or to take him if needed to a Federal holding area, or even to the Court itself. But Stryker looked at him as if Charles was a dirty thing to be stepped on, and whenever Charles took to the air, he could feel the man’s hostility rise. The staff didn’t care for Stryker, either, evidenced by perpetually cold coffee and small portions and bouts of deafness to his demands. Stryker stalked the mansion as if he’d find nests of communists in the basement, or stashes of drugs or weapons in the cupboards.

If Charles avoided him as much as humanly possible, that was only natural. Especially as Stryker’s repugnance grew whenever Charles spoke, or gave directions to staff members. It discomfited the Court agent greatly to see a mutate pretend to humanity. So Charles spent much of his time in his rooms, filling out his applications and enclosing copies of his entire scholastic history, writing essays, and sending off thick packets that might not see replies for months, if at all. 

Otherwise, he buried himself in the library with books or played pinochle with Mrs. Green and Mr. Baker in the kitchen, or poker with Miss Dickens. Or one-person games of chess (which he always lost—and won!) in the library, enjoying the roaring flames of the large fireplace. Westchester in winter was colder than a witch’s teat, and Charles’ hollow bones seemed to make him more susceptible. Although the feathers layering from the back of his neck to his shoulders, to his wings, and tapering down his spine did more to keep him warm than any jumper, he still often had to wear triple or more layers of shirts modified to accommodate his wing joints. Outfitting Charles provided his mother’s tailor a very good income.

The house seemed so empty without his mother.

Twelve days after Sharon had gone, the library phone rang in the evening. She’d called each morning with greetings, calls which Stryker at first tried to take, citing ‘contamination of evidence’ until Charles put his foot down on the second day. That had driven his ‘keeper’ away in a huff. After that, Mrs. Green, or Miss Dickens if present, made sure Stryker couldn’t listen in using the kitchen phone, either.

The operator put through the call as usual, but already Charles felt that something was wrong. And when he heard the words, tinny with distance and impossible to comprehend, his knees gave out and he collapsed, knocking over the chess table. His mind shrilled as loudly as the fallen phone had rung, although not a sound escaped his gaping mouth, his hands white-knuckled around the handset.

Miss Dickens came in moments later, hair in curlers and robe hastily tied. She took one look at Charles and took the handset with its distant voice from his suddenly nerveless fingers, the long coiling cord stretching as she moved.

She spoke. Nodded. Gasped, and covered her mouth, and finally spoke again. Charles took in none of it. His mind whirled. He was reaching, as far as his mind could reach. He felt nothing. The link with his mother had thinned so much with distance. He couldn’t find it. But she had to be there.

The voice on the phone was mistaken, surely. Charles could read nothing of the speaker’s mind, not from this distance. He had to. He had to see for himself.

“I’m going to D.C.,” Charles said, mind as blank as his tone was even and uninflected, as if he’d asked what was for dinner. “I have to find Mother.”

“Charles—”

“No—” He jerked away from Miss Dickens, scrubbing his hands through his hair. “It’s not true. I would know if Mother was—”

“What’s going on? What’s wrong with the mutate?” Stryker pushed the library door open and bustled inside, irritated and looking for a reason to snap, to chastise. Charles curled his lip and turned away, wings folding instinctively around him like a shield.

Miss Dickens put down the phone and pressed her hands to her mouth. She closed her eyes for a long moment, then opened them to direct a stern gaze at Charles. “Charles. Calm down. We’ll get this sorted out.”

“What the hell is going on?!”

“Nothing that concerns you!” Charles shook his head at Stryker, then turned on his heel to pass him, heading for the door. “Miss Dickens, I’m going. I’ll wake Mr. Baker and have him prepare the car while I pack a few things. Can you make arrangements at the hotel where Mother—” His hands clenched and unclenched. “Where Mother. Is. Staying.”

Miss Dickens ignored Stryker’s reddening face. She moved around him to join Charles at the door. “Charles, you know you can’t go. Not without _him.”_

“Go _where?_ If either one of you doesn’t tell me right now what’s going on, I’m going to lock you both up.” Stryker’s chest puffed out like a bullfrog’s.

Charles wheeled around. “Someone just called from D.C. General. They said. They said that my mother was struck by a stray bullet in a protest in front of the Supreme Court Building. She’s.” His voice wavered, grew ragged. His throat felt like it was swelling, clogging with tears unshed. “They said she’s—”

Miss Dickens wrapped an arm around Charles and turned him into her side as he began to sob. She met Stryker’s disgusted stare. “According to a Dr. Stone, Mrs. Xavier passed away twenty minutes ago after being admitted to the ER along with several other victims of the same attack.”

Stryker rubbed his chin. His pajama buttons were askew, his evening stubble greyer than his hair. For half a second, he appeared sympathetic. Then his face hardened. “Put the mutate in its room,” he ordered. “I’ll call D.C. in the morning for instructions. No one is leaving this house tonight.” He looked out at the snow falling heavily outside the windows.

“No!” Charles lifted his head, eyes rimmed with red and wet with tears, nose reddening and cheeks flushed. “I’m going to see my mother!”

“Get it out of here. Chain it if you have to.” Stryker shook his head, then headed for the liquor cabinet in the corner. “I’m going to have a stiff drink.”

Miss Dickens guided Charles away, and after a few steps of fighting her, he gave way. “It can’t be true,” he whispered into her shoulder. “Mother can’ be… gone.”

“We’ll have to wait to see.” Warm palms rubbed up and down Charles’ upper arm, and soon they were entering his bedroom. “Get ready for bed. You and I both know that for all of that man’s rudeness, he’s right about not going anywhere tonight. We wouldn’t make it ten miles in this weather.”

Charles grabbed a set of pajamas from his closet, walked numbly into his bathroom. “I’ve never been ten miles anywhere.” He brushed his teeth, staring at his blank-eyed expression. When he completed his toiletries, he climbed into his bed, the same one he’d had since coming to the estate. Miss Dickens tucked him in. “Try to sleep, dear one. In the morning, we’ll see just what we can do.”

She leaned over him as she hadn’t done for years, since Charles was a baby. Her lips were soft and dry and warm on his temple.

Despite himself, Charles slept.

*

Word of Sharon Xavier’s death made the nightly news. One of the wealthiest women in America, involved in a nationally high-profile court case, gunned down at random by a crazed protestor—more details in the morning! Essex read it over fresh breakfast croissants in a bistro. It was worth considering what would happen to the prototype. Essex had business in the States, as it turned out; young Summers had married and was expecting a child, meaning samples of maternal and fetal DNA needed to be collected. The young woman had made an appointment for a pre-natal check-up; Essex could reach Fairbanks, Alaska in plenty of time. It wouldn’t be difficult to visit Westchester afterward.

*

When Stryker put down the phone in the morning, an ugly light gleamed in his eyes. “You won’t be going to D.C., mutate.” He pursed his lips, gazing at Charles with a mix of triumph and disgruntlement. “You’re to remain in my custody here until a decision’s been made what to do with you.” He turned his back. “Go do whatever it is you do. This doesn’t concern you.”

“She’s my mother!”

Stryker swung around. “You’re a _mutate._ God, you shouldn’t even be able to speak. I don’t know what sick games Widow Xavier got up to with you, freak, but I won’t stand for your blatant disrespect. Get out of my sight, or I’ll lock you down so fast your head will spin. Now. _Get your feathers out of my face.”_

Charles spun on his heel and ran. He passed Mrs. Green in the kitchen, slammed through the door and out into the yard, where the new-fallen snow covered the ground in a thick, smooth crust like crystallized white sugar, throwing prismatic sparkles wherever he looked under a clean white sky and a pale sun. It was cold, it was freezing, but he felt nothing beyond white-hot rage burning through his mind, searing his veins.

Charles threw himself into the sky with a scream.

_Thirty minutes later_

Stryker marched the perimeter of the property, heavy boots clumping with snow as he made his steady way around. Although Charles kept a tether on the man’s mind, right now, Stryker couldn’t even be seen, far distant from the cozy kitchen where Charles sat with Miss Dickens and Mrs. Green. Charles had finally had enough of the man’s petty cruelties, especially once Stryker had tried to lock him away after their shouting match and Charles’ wild flight.

With warm tea wafting soothing chamomile steam into the air, and Mrs. Green offering a comforting smile, Charles dialed the Xavier’s law firm. Even before he could ask for their family lawyer, the phone was snatched from the receptionist’s hand. “We heard,” said Mr. Lieber. “GLKH offers our most sincere condolences, Mr. Xavier.”

Charles put his hand over his eyes. He swallowed, and his voice broke when he spoke. “Thank you, sir. If you’re watching the news, you know why I’m calling. I. They won’t let me go to D.C.” He picked up his teacup in a shaking hand, and let its warmth steady him a bit. “Is there any way I can get there, if the weather permits?”

“Let me see what we can do. In the meantime, don’t do anything rash. Don’t provoke your handler, because you know what as well as I how that would come across in the public eye.”

An unruly angel, a troublemaking mutate. Unlike a piece of machinery, there was no return to default setting, no return to factory for repair. Only termination, or sale to a place even worse, where most mutates didn’t last even as long as their twenty-five year span.

“Yes, sir,” Charles replied, and “Thank you again, sir,” until the phone went dead in his hand and he finished off his tea in one gulp.

“I suppose I’d better let Stryker come in now.” He forced a half-smile to his lips, felt the slight lessening of worry in his companions. “I’ll have to find some way to occupy him until the solicitors come through.”

The paperwork rejecting the Court’s authority over the minor child Charles Xavier hit the Chief Justice’s desk before the sun rose in the east on the second day after Sharon Xavier’s death. It only complicated an already complex case.

In the meantime, Sharon Xavier’s funeral was delayed, bad weather preventing return of her body to Salem Center. A slight push from Charles kept Stryker occupied in the second floor library, reading volume after volume and staying out of the way.

As the winter drew toward Christmas, Charles and the staff could only watch the news, and worry, and mourn their loss.

*

Essex completed his mission in Alaska without any untoward events. It had been simple enough to infiltrate the hospital, and to temporarily replace the staff doctor during Katherine Summers’ visit. With the samples safely stored, Essex made his way toward Westchester, paying close attention now to the furor that raged in the mutate case.

It appeared another young angel had been brought into the public eye. It did not entirely surprise Essex that it was Warren Worthington II raising hell in the legal system. Warren Worthington III’s mutation was entirely natural (unlike the Xavier), and his father insisted that his angel son was his sole heir. The Worthington army of lawyers was proving itself formidable indeed.

Within days, the Supreme Court ruled that mutants were human. Born of human parents, they could be nothing else.

But what of mutates?

*

On the day of the Worthington victory, the Xavier estate celebrated. Surely if the Court went this far, divided though the opinions had been, surely it was only a matter of time before mutates were also judged human. 

And then the D.C. snow storms broke, and Sharon Xavier could come home. Stryker remained a thorn in Charles’ side, but he seemed at least to respect the funeral service, allowing Charles to attend before returning him to the estate, conveniently forgetting his self-isolation of the previous days.

Even before arriving at the grand structure and crowded rooms of the Westchester Episcopalian church, Charles found himself glad he’d thought to wear the old circlet. He’d never ventured beyond the estate, never felt the press of so many other minds. Once, it would have been the most exciting day of his life.

Now, he thought he could, if pressed, hold his shields tight against the innumerable buzzing thoughts focusing so intently on his mother, on him, speculating, wondering. But his strength seemed to have drained overnight. It was easier to slip the circlet over his head in a bathroom in the church, to affix it with spirit gum he’d borrowed from the pantry, to comb his hair carefully over the slight gleam of silver, hoping the gum and his pomade would hold, and then to rejoin Stryker to be escorted to the front pew. Both his presence and his first-row seating incited a low roar of whispered outrage and intrigue.

Stryker allowed no one to speak to Charles at the church or the cemetery, Charles grateful for once for the man’s rigid adherence to duty. Afterward, Charles stalked away as soon as they arrived home, the funeral program stiff in his hand, his tie strangling him. He ran up the stairs, pounding feet jolting dust particles aloft, and slammed his door behind him. He couldn’t get out of the formal suit fast enough.

He slumped at his desk, then idly lined up the photos of his mother, of his mother and father, of his mother and himself. His parents hadn’t had much time together. Sharon Xavier had been Charles’ mother more than twice as long as she’d been a wife. And now it was Charles who was alone. Angels and demons of human design now roamed the earth; in an age of man-made fairy tales, maybe his family was cursed to loneliness.

He flexed his shoulders, felt a body-wide ache. He was as tired as he’d ever been. His eyes felt full and wet, but the tears didn’t fall. Just ached behind the bones of his skull, the way his chest ached. Mother would never walk through his door again, or call him to her. He’d never show her another project, or hear her sing when she thought no one was near. He’d never smell her perfume, and suddenly there was nothing he wanted to do more than to smell his mother’s scent.

Charles dragged on warm, comfortable trousers and a thick jumper, hurriedly fastened the snaps round the bases of his wings. He found himself running down the corridor, faster and faster until he reached his mother’s door—waited for her amused “Come in, darling” after she’d heard his heavy-footed approach. But she’d never invite him in again.

The knob was cold under sweaty fingers. Charles swung open the door. His mother’s sitting room was just as it had been the last time he saw it, only days before. Heart pounding, he walked through it toward her bedroom. It was just as neat and tidy as it had ever been. Sharon Xavier was gone; shouldn’t there be something different about these rooms? Charles drifted toward her closet, and here was the scent he’d sought, his mother’s talcum powder, the faint bitter odor of dry-cleaned fabric, a hint of moth balls.

No perfume. No soap or clean skin.

Charles trudged out of his mother’s suite. He went back downstairs, listlessly made a sandwich, then sat at the kitchen table. His mother had rarely entered the kitchen, and had certainly never made anything more complicated than a sandwich herself. He watched Mrs. Green prepare for lunch, listened to the gentle burble of her innocuous chatter as she so carefully gave him his space to grieve, as she did routine things in a routine fashion, because that was better than dwelling on what was going on.

“I’m going to fly,” he told Mrs. Green. “Just for a little while. Maybe it will help clear my head.” She petted his arm sympathetically as he passed by.

Even at noon, the pallid sun gave only tepid warmth. Charles flapped his wings to build up some heat in his body before launching himself upward. Wind slapped his face, and it was even colder as he flew higher, until even the beauty of the world beneath wasn’t enough to distract him from the chill. Cold gusts of air buffeted him on the way down, skirling currents tugged at him, and he finally fell the last few feet, landing on his face.

A pair of heavy boots stomped into view, and before Charles could scramble up, a strong shove knocked him flat. One of the boots settled on the back of his neck. His head was pressed down, his cheek and one eyelid burning in the snow.

“You’re a spoiled brat,” Stryker told him. “You’re a freak. It’s clear no one’s ever given you any kind of discipline.” He grabbed Charles’ left wing, pulling it out to full extension, crouched down with his other leg’s knee on Charles’ back. “I’m going to ground you, mutate, until you learn some manners around your betters.” Pressure on Charles’ flight feathers, tugging—and the sound of metal blades shearing through something thick—

He wasn’t strong enough to get away. Slashed feather tips fluttered past Charles’ half-buried face.

Stryker got up after a moment. “Get back inside if you know what’s good for you.” His eyes were bright and cruel. “You don’t want to catch your death of cold.”

Sprawled on the ground, Charles watched with one eye as Stryker strode toward the kitchen door, sideways and surreal. Saw Mrs. Green appear as it opened, saw her throw her hands up and run. Felt her grab him and flinched away, until her soothing litany of “It’s all right, sweetheart, it’s all right, everything’s going to be all right…”

An hour later, Sam the falconer tended Charles’ damaged wing, spread out across the kitchen table. “They’ll grow back, thank goodness. Six months, seven, you’ll be good as new.” He smoothed the amateur cuts as best he could, although they lay close to blood vessels, and he wouldn’t cut them down further to even them out.

Stryker had wandered in for a snack at some point, had made a show of examining Charles’ ruined primaries, had shrugged. “No law against clipping an angel’s wings,” he’d said, and Charles had finally, finally, finally remembered the circlet and had ripped it from his hair with tufts clinging, the pain inconsequential, and sent the man reeling, sent his ugly mind away and out of sight, back to the second floor library. 

While Sam worked quietly to mitigate the damage, Charles called Mr. Lieber. Dully, he reported what Stryker had done. Afterward, he asked about the case for mutates. And then he suggested that perhaps the Worthington lawyers might be able to offer some useful advice.

*

The Xavier mansion is full to the brim with lawyers when Essex arrives. A Miss Dickens greets him at the door, notified by the gatekeeper. She brings him inside to join the rest. Essex doesn’t bother to tell her he isn’t one of them.

Instead, he waits until she hurries away to deal with luncheon arrangements, and then seeks out the sole inhabitant he’s returned to see. His own telepathy enables him to track Xavier quickly, ascending flight after flight of stairs until he reaches what must surely be the house’s attic.

Inside, he finds the lost fledgling pining at the windows.

“Wherever I go, there’s always something to remind me of Mother,” young Xavier says. “Except here. She didn’t come here often.” He turns to face Essex, silhouetted against the sunlit blue of the sky. “I remember you,” he says. “Your face is different. But—” _—up here…_

Essex raises an eyebrow. “I never knew what Brian Xavier’s mutation was.”

“Empathy,” replies Brian’s son. “In me, whether due to how I came to be, or a natural evolution of the trait, it turned from empathy to telepathy, much like your own.”

“Not quite like mine, but it’s an advantageous trait nonetheless.” Essex watches the boy smile briefly, sharply.

“I’m grateful to be alive, of course.” He tilts his head. “You saw the crowd downstairs.”

“A veritable murder of crows.”

Feathers rustle, ruffling with Xavier’s soft laughter. “If they fail to win the case that mutates, like naturally occurring mutants, should enjoy the same rights and responsibilities as any other human citizen, I will nonetheless be guaranteed care, comfort and _this_ home for so long as I live.” He looks at Essex with those near-glowing eyes. “Am I designed to live the same span as the other mutates?”

Essex shakes his head. “Unknown. I gave to you what I didn’t give to the clone of your father, what your mother requested—immunity to known diseases, longevity, other traits upon which I improved. It seemed to me that she would reconsider once she saw the reality of what she’d requested.” Xavier’s focused attention feels like a warm wave over Essex’s mind. “A body can be duplicated, but without exact duplication of the psyche, there can be no happy return of the whole.”

“Even so, you are the first of your kind, and unique even beyond that. Without regular tissue examination, I can do no more than speculate on possible ongoing genetic expression, influenced by external factors such as nutrition, emotional health, stressors, et cetera.” Brian Xavier’s intelligence seems to have bred true; comprehension gleams in his son’s eyes.

“Thank you, but I’ll give that a pass. I’m sure you understand.” A wry smile twists Xavier’s mouth. He paces closer, hands in his trouser pockets. “Once the investigators dug up old financial records from when you started the project, Mother’s role, at least monetarily speaking, came out. I’m glad you succeeded in hiding the exact details of what she wanted—although I know she wouldn’t care for being remembered as a grieving widow duped by Dr. Milbury.”

“Which brings us to now.”

“Which brings us to now.” The warm pressure eases off. Xavier pushes the sole of his shoe through a streak of dust on the floor. “If the case for mutate humanity succeeds, I’m going after the others. The ones who didn’t end up in loving homes. The ones who are still alive, and still have a few years left.”

“You want the private sales records, the ones that were never made public.” Essex considers. Such an undertaking won’t affect his concerns at all. He still has samples from every creature designed and brought to fruition. He still has Xavier’s, for that matter.

“I do.” Xavier reaches up to brush a hand along the crest of one folded wing. “You made me what I am, but Mother made me _who_ I am. She might have chosen not to take me in.”

He looks at Essex. “I know what became of my… I don’t know how to describe my precise relationship to your other creations, but I suppose—brothers and sisters would be most appropriate. And I wish to do for those I can find what my mother did for me.” His eyes are wide, but not foolish; despite his youth, he’s more mature than most human boys his age. “Even though she’s gone, she’s still here. In this house.” Xavier places his palm over his heart, next to the faint outline of his keel. For a moment, his gaze drops, wings folding tighter. “In here. She’ll always be a part of me.”

He raises his eyes, meets Essex’s with firm determination. “Will you give me the records? I’ve no interest in exposing your continued existence, or interfering with you in any way.” He bites his lips, glances away, looks back again. “Will you give me _my_ records? I won’t be able to understand them now, but I suppose you could say genetic research runs in my blood. I plan on becoming a geneticist—although, if I may say—not to the same purpose as yourself.”

Essex shrugs, unworried. It’s possible that one day the boy now before him might become a formidable man, worthy as ally or opponent. If such a day ever comes, it will lie far, far in the future. “That is acceptable. I can provide you all of the information within a month.” Xavier nods, then offers his hand. It reminds Essex of his youth a century past, when gentlemen need only speak their contract aloud and seal it with a handshake to accept its binding.

Warm hand engulfed in cold, Xavier pauses, tilting his head to listen. Essex follows suit, and hears heavy footsteps approaching the attic door. The man who enters is just entering middle age, tending toward heaviness. Xavier’s Court handler. Essex notes Stryker as a man of bluster and bluff, petty cruelty aging his features. Watery eyes widen as he takes in their joined hands. His mouth opens, presumably to spew some vitriol, but instead of speaking, he turns on his heel and walks away.

Xavier sighs, slipping his hand free. “I’ll be glad to see the back of him,” he mutters. He touches the curve of his damaged wing. “He’s a small-minded man and he hates, loudly and frequently.”

Essex nods, then turns to make his own way out. He pauses. “If you should ever need assistance, you may call upon me.”

Xavier’s already warm eyes grew warmer still. “I’ll remember that.”

Downstairs, Essex is nearly out the front door when a great cry goes up from the study. And then Xavier comes leaping down the stairs, half-flying with his damaged wing fluttering, half simple youthful energy. “Come back,” he calls, speeding past to the dining room. “Come see!”

The lawyers jabber excitedly among themselves, but Miss Dickens and what looks like a cook in a cheerful apron clasp hands and stare at the small television at the end of the room, their faces breaking into joyful grins.

Xavier pops back out. “They’ve decided!” His flushed face radiates triumph and joy, and his mind surges with it, showering everyone around him like a rain of confetti. “The Justices have declared us human, without any further arguments to be made.”

Stryker hurries in, his carriage stiff. He observes the jubilation with pursed lips, shaking his head, and the disgust that he’d exhibited in the attic returns when young Xavier turns to him. Charles makes little attempt at solemnity, although he holds himself properly, as fine a gentleman as society has ever produced—something that incenses Stryker, by his choleric expression.

“Mr. Stryker,” Charles says, a smirk threatening to break free. “I’m sure you’ll receive your marching orders soon, but in the meantime, you may consider yourself uninvited to my home. I’ll have your bags packed for you.” He inclines his head the slightest degree, regal and silly at once, a boy on the cusp of manhood. He turns his back on the Court agent in clear dismissal, not even waiting to see the anger and outrage, the red-faced snarl, the way Stryker turns on his heels and strides from the room, a petty bully deprived of his prey.

Xavier instead has gone to the women, who embrace him turn and turn again, until he climbs and flutters to a tabletop to address the lawyers who are no longer needed, or perhaps, given his stated intentions, might be needed for a new purpose entirely. Essex leaves him to his thanks and his now-secured future.

Before leaving the States, there is a family in upstate New York which could prove to be of interest in conjunction with the Summers project, and another in Boston. Essex drives from the Xavier estate, returning to his research and his life’s work.

Still, he might look in on the boy from time to time, to see how his flock increases.


End file.
